My second night in Belize, I stayed in Hopkins. People told me that it had a nice beach. It did, but it was relative to Belize......because I found out that Belize is not known for having nice beaches.
I asked around town about where I could camp on the beach. Everyone had a place they recommended but when I went there, they said it was probably not a good idea. One guy lead me to someone's back yeard away from the beach. There were other people camped there in a crowded, uninviting place. He said I could camp here for $10 a night. I said.....'no thanks.....I am going to camp on the beach in front of the pizza place". The guy said that I could as all the beaches in Belize are public, but "I would have to be my own man". What he was saying is that I would have to take care of myself. So far I have done ok. So that is where I camped without a problem.
Here was my view

I didn't put on bug spray and this is the result
In fact, I can feel them bitting right now but I don't want to take the time to get the spray out of my bike and put it on. I will probably be sorry in the morning

Ok, I gotta say that the beaches in Placentia were pretty nice. The water was not crystal clear and there was a lot of sea grass. But none of that mattered as they were serving $2 rum punches right on the sand

The one big negative was there was no where to camp next to my motorcycle on the beach in Placentia. I asked around and there just is not any camping there. Most if not all of the cabanas were taken for the holidays. So I went for a little jog on the beach and found this prime spot. It was an empty lot with hard ground that lead all the way to the water.

Here's the sunrise in the morning. Around midnight it started to rain and I didn't have my tent fly on. So I jumped out of my tent and had to put in on in the dark in the rain. It didn't seem like it was going to rain just hours earlier. I am still not used to the tropics yet

Today, I went to the Blue Hole National park
It is not the one in the ocean, but a cool little park on the land with the same name.
They have some cool caves there
Usually I disregard signs like this but last year I had quite the scare by breaking the rules in St Lucia and came REALLY close to getting arrested and deported.
So I just went a little ways in to this cave just to check it out

Here is the main cave in the park. It had an underground river flowing thru it. They wanted $40 US to guide me thru it. I figured I could find my way thru it myself. I have a really nice 700 lumen flashlight that lit the way. There were lots of passages. I spent about 45 minutes trying to find my way thru the cave to the other end but I could figure it out. So I made my way back out. You were supposed to have a guide in the cave so I didn't want to get caught either. I also tried from the other direction. I spent about 30 minutes and I thought I was making good progress. I turned my flashlight off and I saw light up ahead. I figured that I had made it! But when I got there, it was the same point that I had entered. Some how I went deep in and circled back to the beginnig. That kind of freaked my out because I didn't feel like I made a u-turn at any point. I got out of there. Now I see why they have the guides!

It's really an underground river that comes to the surface here. In the back where it is deep blue, the water emerges from a deep cave, flows on the surface for about a 100 yards and then goes in to another cave (full of bats)
The water was perfect to take a dip in. And get cleaned up